Maria (2)
Director Mun had a great deal on his mind.
Needless to say, it was because of Mok Hyunsun. Gyeongseong Publishing was going to release a special revised edition of the Wolkwang Publishing collection, with new criticism attached to it. It was an idea without precedent.
One or two books could be reissued, certainly.
But to reissue the entire collection as it was? Three hundred volumes of it?
In fact, the cost was not the real problem. The manuscripts were already ready, and because it was a collection, the design for one volume could simply be duplicated three hundred times. The problem was pride.
If it failed to make any real impact on the market, it would be worse than doing nothing at all. Is he really that confident? No matter how insignificant a work might be, even if they commissioned another critic for it, this was still three hundred volumes.
This would not be solved by one or two good commentaries.
Then he heard word of something else.
Mok Hyunsun was going to write criticism on Son Young-han's Maria. At the very least, Maria was a work that no one who had gone through middle school and high school in Korea could fail to know. Maria... he was starting with something fairly classical, wasn't he? But was there even anything left to reinterpret in Maria?
And yet, once he heard that the work was actually underway, curiosity took hold of him.
Not long after that, author Son Young-han had occasion to visit Gyeongseong Publishing.
Perfectly timed, the film Maria was about to open, and he had been invited onto Gyeongseong Bukbuk to promote it. After finishing the shoot on the third floor, Son Young-han came up to Director Mun's office.
The two of them were not close, exactly, but they did maintain a decent relationship despite the age gap.
Director Mun did not possess deep enough literary knowledge to hold serious, sustained conversations with writers.
But he was a natural businessman, and as such, he was adept at dealing with people.
So the older generation tended to like him quietly.
Of course, it probably also helped that, given Gyeongseong Publishing's status, they wanted to stay on good terms with him.
“Ah, this blasted YouTube and whatever else... It's not easy for an old writer to promote his own work.”
“Haha. You must have had a hard time. Still, thank you for coming in person, sir.”
“Of course I came. They're making a film out of my work. I don't have anything else I need to do, so I ought to do at least this much, don't you think?”
Son Young-han spoke to Director Mun with a blend of honorifics and casual speech.
After a glass of soju, even that would have turned into full informality, but since they were in Director Mun's office, he was still keeping up appearances. In truth, the people Director Mun met in a professional capacity were usually of a higher class than this.
No one would casually speak down to a man who had become a director.
In that sense, writers were not very well adjusted to the social mold.
They could be easygoing and come at you full tilt, or else, no matter how hard you tried, they would never let you close. But Director Mun liked that unpredictable individuality.
At least they were usually consistent inside and out.
The older they were, the stronger that tendency became.
Compared to the slippery, two-faced people he had met while running multiple companies, writers like this felt much more human to him.
“By the way, I heard the president of Wolkwang Publishing is ill.”
“Ah... so the rumor has already spread that far.”
“No one doesn't know. I even called to check on him because I was worried, but he wouldn't pick up. I can't just go barging over there either, so this is a bit...”
Son Young-han clicked his tongue, sounding genuinely regretful.
Though he was younger than President Jang, it still felt bitter to him as a man of roughly the same generation. At that moment, Director Mun had a thought. Should I bring up the collection? I'm curious what writers would think about it, too.
So he explained the situation one piece at a time.
That Mok Hyunsun had said he wanted to attach new commentary to the Wolkwang Publishing collection.
And that he had chosen Maria as the first project.
“Critic Mok Hyunsun?” Son Young-han asked, eyes wide.
“Yes. What do you think?”
“Well... haha.” He let out a startled, empty laugh.
Then he drew in a breath, huff, and thought for a moment.
“Wolkwang Publishing's world literature collection has a certain aura of its own. But if you republish the whole thing as a revised edition, especially if another publisher besides Wolkwang is the one issuing it, that aura could break.”
“Yes. That's the worry, naturally.”
“But isn't Critic Mok Hyunsun's writing truly remarkable?”
“That is also true. But to trust only in the power of the writing and then go ahead with the collection...”
“Director Mun, Director Mun.” Son Young-han waved a hand. “That's because you don't realize how strong Critic Mok Hyunsun's writing is. I received his criticism on Gwae, so I know. As a writer, if someone were to write a critique like that for your own work...”
“...”
“It would almost make you happy.”
“!”
“At this age, after writing for so long, you start to develop what you might call mannerism, don't you? Those things creep up on you. I think I started feeling that way around fifty. I've been writing while stubbornly fighting that mannerism the whole time. But after receiving Mok Hyunsun's criticism... well, at first I couldn't quite grasp what it meant, but as I kept reading it over, I realized just how extraordinary it was. Anyway, in today's terms, would you call it something like 'soda'?”
Director Mun was privately astonished.
He had not expected the word soda to come out of the mouth of a man Son Young-han's age.
What he did not know was that after Mok Hyunsun had compared Gwae to the theory of spoons and silver-spoons-from-birth, Son Young-han had made an effort to learn the sensibilities of the younger generation.
“This may be a little too optimistic, but I'm actually looking forward to it. Who knows? Maybe Critic Mok Hyunsun will write 'soda'-like commentary for the Wolkwang Publishing collection too. Something very new, very fresh.”
That was when it happened. Knock, knock. After the knock came the secretary, stepping inside.
Director Mun looked at him as if asking what was going on.
The secretary was holding a stapled stack of pages.
“Director. The periodicals department sent up a manuscript. Should I leave it here and go?”
“!”
It was Mok Hyunsun's manuscript.
The manuscripts Director Mun received directly were his and his alone. The secretary had shown a certain sense in bringing it here now.
Since Son Young-han was present, they could look at the manuscript together if they wanted to.
If that felt too delicate, he could quietly leave it and go.
Director Mun chose the former.
“Give it here. Make one more copy and give one to Mr. Son, too.”
“Ah, yes. Understood.”
After the secretary left, Son Young-han asked, “You're giving me one too? What sort of manuscript is it?”
“It looks like Mok Hyunsun has finished the commentary.”
“Ah...!”
From that point on, the two men said nothing.
It was the kind of situation that left each of them tense for their own reasons. A little while later, the secretary came in again, set down the two manuscripts, and left.
“Then shall we read it, sir?”
“...Yes, let's.”
The two of them began reading the criticism in silence.
“...”
“...”
The quiet hanging over the director's office was absolute.
Rustle, rustle, the sound of pages turning.
“...Hoo...”
Son Young-han's trembling exhale.
Even Director Mun's eyes trembled at the sound.
Son Young-han, who read quickly, was the first to set the manuscript down on the table.
Then he raised the now-cold coffee and drained it in one go. Gulp, gulp.
At last, Director Mun put his own manuscript down.
He swallowed dryly. The two men looked at each other without speaking.
Director Mun could not think of a literary term that would do justice to what he was feeling, and Son Young-han wanted a moment of silence to let the aftertaste settle.
Then Son Young-han spoke. “Didn't I tell you? That he'd write something new, something fresh... astonishingly so.”
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
After Son Young-han left, Director Mun immediately summoned the three editors.
Not to his office, but to the conference room.
The three editors had been called in without knowing why.
Director Mun greeted them with a grave expression.
“Thank you for coming so quickly, despite how busy you are.”
If the director called, you came. That was why they were here already, but Director Mun's way of handling things was sometimes abrupt or impulsive, so this much did not surprise them.
More importantly, his impulses always seemed to work out in the market, so there was no real complaint to be made.
“Mok Hyunsun has sent up the first commentary.”
“The one written for Maria?”
“You know already, Editor Im.”
“Everyone in the office has been talking about nothing else. How could I not know?” Editor Im gave a small laugh.
Editor Ryu found that a little irritating.
Come to think of it, Mok Hyunsun belonged to Editor Im's side,
and yet in this collection project, Editor Im had the comfortable air of someone standing off to one side.
And then there were the subtle feelings of company politics.
Director Mun was not the sort to miss that. “I imagine the two of you editors have had a rough time with this lately. But when planning a large-scale project, isn't it basically right that every department should put its shoulder to the wheel? Besides, the periodicals department's work has also had a positive spillover effect on your two departments.”
“I understand that well, Director,” said Editor Yoon of the Korean Literature Department.
Mok Hyunsun had done a great deal for Gyeongseong Publishing over the years.
And those efforts had sometimes benefited the Korean Literature Department or the Foreign Literature Department as well.
Editor Ryu nodded. “It's an undeniable fact. ...Still, when it comes to the collection, I do think we need to approach it conservatively. Since the collection is one of our department's major projects, mishandling it would cause serious damage.”
“A perfectly realistic concern, I think,” Director Mun said. “But the manuscript has arrived, and the proper order is to determine our position after seeing it. I'll hand it out first.”
The secretary waiting nearby placed the manuscripts before the three of them. They had already read the atmosphere.
Director Mun's attitude had shifted from neutral.
No, perhaps it had tipped a little farther than neutral, toward approval.
Editor Ryu began examining the manuscript. [Maria], The Birth of the Mother of Capitalism
Capitalism?
An unexpected word leapt out at him.
At that moment, he met Editor Yoon's eyes.
Editor Yoon's expression was no different.
Why is capitalism showing up here?
Meanwhile, Editor Im was focusing on the manuscript in silence.
He seemed already to have fallen into the world of the commentary, his brow slightly furrowed.
Editor Ryu began reading the body of the text.
[Until now, the method of reading Maria has relied on motherhood, one of humanity's ancient values. If ordinary motherhood is said to be directed toward the child born through the body, then how much greater must the motherhood directed toward the child received without even that body have been? That, in essence, was the basic logic.]
It was a sentence that summarized the entire history of interpretation of Maria in a single stroke.
It made the long decades poured into research on Maria look almost meaningless.
Editor Ryu found himself thinking, So many people had devoted themselves to research based on this simple logic?
Why had he never realized it?
Not until Mok Hyunsun said it.
And then the next sentence.
[But what if we looked at it this way? The motherhood expressed in Maria, motherhood toward a child accepted without going through the body, is in fact an entirely new kind of motherhood.]
A completely different kind of motherhood?
When Editor Ryu saw the next sentence, he gave a sharp start.
[For example, this is what I mean. The absolute value that swept over us during the economic awakening of the 1970s and raised us up. That is, capitalism.]